When in use, luggage cases may need to be relatively rigid and durable in order to withstand harsh conditions during the transport and handling of the luggage. When not in use, however, luggage cases may need to be stored. In some cases, a user may wish to minimize the space that a luggage case occupies when stored so that he or she can store other things in a storage location. In order to make luggage cases somewhat smaller when not in use, some luggage cases include one or more zipper expansion/contraction mechanisms that allow the sidewalls of the luggage case to expand when a zipper is unzipped and contract when the zipper is zipped. Typically, the expansion/contraction mechanism includes a flexible portion of fabric (such as nylon) that is cinched by the zipper when in a zipped, closed arrangement, and is allowed to be pulled tight when in an unzipped, open arrangement. The expansion portion of fabric, however, is not rigid, and thus may not provide sufficient support for the contents of the luggage case during, for example, transport and handling of the luggage case. Such expansion/contraction mechanisms also typically allow expansion/contraction along the depth of a luggage case, and does not typically allow the luggage case to expand/contract along the height of the luggage case.
In order to allow luggage cases to expand/contract along both the depth and height of the luggage case, some cases include one or more removable boards that may be selectively inserted as the inner side walls of a luggage case. These removable boards, however, may be lost when they are not inserted into the side walls of the luggage case. It may also be inconvenient for a user to manually remove the boards from the luggage case each time the luggage case is put into a storage location, particularly if the removable boards are secured using screws or other types of fasteners.
Also, some luggage folding mechanisms are located in the center portion of a luggage case (e.g., away from the wheels, which may be made of hard plastic in order to withstand the aforesaid harsh conditions during transport and handling of the luggage case). As such, these folding mechanisms may not allow the luggage case to be folded completely flat because the luggage case cannot be folded or bent along certain points.
Documents that show some approaches to folding or foldable luggage include U.S. Pat. No. 6,047,798, WO 00/69305, US 2008/135364, US 2003/034636, EP 1,846,300, U.S. Pat. No. 5,197,580, WO 2010/141207, U.S. Pat. No. 6,408,997, CN 2737187Y, U.S. Pat. No. 5,749,446, EP 1,589,848, US 2010/0282556, U.S. Pat. No. 4,753,329, CA 2,296,904, U.S. Pat. No. 5,343,578, and U.S. Pat. No. 2,699,848. These proposals, however, may be improved upon.